Developers play a crucial role in making the Internet relevant for Africans. This is why fostering a vibrant African developer ecosystem is very important to Google. Developers and tech entrepreneurs from across the continent joined thousands of their peers from all over the world to explore the latest tech innovations at Google I/O 2013 in San Francisco. Several of them were members of the Google Developer Groups in countries such as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Togo and Uganda.

Luckily, participation was not limited to those who could make it to San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Developers back home were also able to get in on the action with more than 67 I/O Extended parties hosted by Google Developer Groups and Google Student Ambassadors across the continent where talks were streamed live to an excited audience.

Away from the excitement of I/O ‘13, it has been a busy year for many African developers and tech startups. We added six new apps to our African case studies page:

Maji Dashboards and Virtual Kenya from Upande: websites that utilize the power of Google’s Geo tools to make information about Kenya readily accessible for better decision making, development planning, and education.

ReadyCash from Parkway Projects: a home grown mobile money service from Nigeria with an app that leverages the power of the Android platform to integrate a unique QR code based payment system.